


This is the life

by FeelingsDusk



Series: Teen Wolf Bingo [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alexandrine Argent is the Argent Matriarch, Angst, F/M, Gen, Kid!Stiles, werefox!stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeelingsDusk/pseuds/FeelingsDusk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(For the Free Choice square)</p><p>Klaudia Stolarczyk’s life starts going to hell when her parents die.</p><p>Exactly the opposite happens to Mshcha Kara Stilinski’s life when the same happens to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the life

**Author's Note:**

> For the free choice square of my teen wolf bingo card.
> 
> Features Ace and Aro Peter and Kate. Also very vague mentions of abuse, neglect and rape. The last one is just implied.

When she’s young and stupid, Klaudia Stolarczyk makes the mistake of getting involved with one Rościslaw Blaszkiewicz. He’s seventeen to her thirteen, but he’s handsome and sweet and funny and pays her so much attention and…

… he’s also part of the Pruszków. 

Her skulk doesn’t notice until a month after she starts dating him, and, even then, they don’t find out all the pertinent details, like his age and occupation, until a year later. It’s not surprising at all, because it’s not like they’ve paid her any attention since her parents died and she became a burden. So long she keeps her grades up, does her chores and doesn’t cause any trouble, they don’t care. 

At first, he romances her like in those trashy novels she likes to read. There are romantic dates, beautiful flowers and thoughtful gifts, and he’s so respectful and affectionate she sometimes cries. She’s in love. 

Then, she starts to get glimpses of the darker side of his life that she willfully ignores. This is good, he loves her, he gives her what she needs and her skulk doesn’t. She’s not going to ruin the best thing in her life. Soon, the moment she’s of age and isn’t under the custody of her aunt, she will tell him her deepest secret, whether she has the consent of her family or not.

And then, one day, everything goes to hell when she says _no, she won’t deal drugs to children_ and doesn’t let him convince her otherwise, like he always does. She can’t change at will yet, no one has bothered teaching her, so she’s powerless against his bruising hands. Afterwards, he kisses her already blackening cheek and tells her he loves her. She escapes, feeling broken. She supposes she should feel happy that he didn’t touch her beyond to bruise her, but she doesn’t. He attacks her family when he finds her gone and that she refuses to go back. They retaliate. He threatens to kill her too. 

The final balance of her acts of foolishness is that her entire skulk is forced into hiding, that a whole branch of the Pruszków is gone and that she has to flee to the states, exiled from her skulk and heartbroken.

Twelve years and a lot of hardships later, he finds her again in a small town in Maine. He finds her because she foolishly refused to lose her name (the only thing left from her parents) to him too, and because, after so much time, she had thought that chapter of her life was over and she had grown careless. He easily catches her unawares and kidnaps her. When she wakes up naked and groggy and tied to a chair, she loses control of her transformation and tears him to shreds.

She flees again. When she arrives to the new town, her last name not Stolarczyk anymore, she pledges loyalty to the local alpha like she did before to avoid becoming an omega. Three months after she found her way into that small town in California, she realizes that she hasn’t had her period in a while. She cries. 

Deputy John Stilinski finds her babbling inconsolable in the park with a pregnancy test in her hands. From then on he’s such a pillar of support for her that he’s the one that’s in the delivery room with her when the time comes. When she finally has the baby in her hands, all cheekbones and nose that scream of Rościslaw, she remembers what her actions caused and her stupidity. She names the boy Mshcha Kara and lies to John about the meaning of the names. 

When the little boy is one, she marries John. She hasn't shifted since she left Maine and she won't ever again, the memory of her claws tearing into Rościslaw always a vivid one, so she decides to never tell her husband about the supernatural, hopping that since the father of her little boy was human, he won’t be a fox. She changes her name to its English form of Claudia, takes his last name and prays that the worst is over.

Everything goes more or less without hiccups for a while, until Mshcha starts displaying the usual growing development of a werefox kit. John suggests that maybe they should have him tested because it probably is ADHD. When she dismisses it, not knowing how to explain without telling him about the supernatural, and he insists, she makes a mistake that she will always regret (but that she’ll repeat again and again) and that will alienate her husband from Mshcha.

She snaps that he is _her_ son, not his, that she knows best and that he doesn’t have a say.

John is so stung by the rebuke that he takes three double shifts in a row at the station. This is a situation that will be repeated time and again for a while before he gives up the battle and keeps his mouth shut about the issue, even if he tries to help the kid as well as he can. Claudia tries not resenting her own son for the tenseness that that brings to their relationship.

Things look up when Mshcha, who insists on being called Stiles now (fed up already with people mangling his name), is four. Claudia is happy and John is static. Their doctor tells them that she has to take it easy, because she could miscarry easily. She follows his orders to the letter.

But then Mshcha gets captured by a rogue hunter when they leave the Hale’s after renewing their pledge. In the scuffle she gets hurt and she miscarries. John, who doesn’t know about the supernatural, doesn’t understand what could have possibly brought her to the woods beside recklessness. He can’t look at her. Claudia can’t look at Mshcha.

It takes them almost a year to repair their relationship and, just as they’re almost there, Gerard Argent goes against Matriarch Argent’s orders and sets the Hale house on fire. Alpha Talia Hale and her husband die. The rest of the family would have too if Alexandrine Argent hadn’t gotten wind of what was happening thanks to her daughter and rushed to intervene. Gerard is judged guilty by the Western Tribunal and executed. Laura Hale inherits the alpha powers. Treaties are renegotiated. No one has the time to set up a meeting so Claudia can pledge her loyalty to the new alpha. 

She becomes an omega. Soon, she starts to lose her mind. She starts seeing Rościslaw everywhere. She tries telling John, pointing at him sitting at the kitchen table. _He’s going to kill me._ John doesn’t believe her, doesn’t help her. She won’t ever be hurt by him again, she swears to herself. 

She takes matters into her own hands. 

—

Stiles is terrified out of his mind. Mama has lost it. Her claws tear at his skin and he screams. The world suddenly shifts from perspective when he bites the arm that reaches to hurt him. Blood rushes into his mouth and he gags. Mama screams. He runs and she follows. Claws reach his back again and he wails. He tries scurrying under a log but gets caught and tossed. What happens next will be forever blocked in his mind.

He flees.

The search party will find Claudia’s body in the morning, impaled by a tree branch after a long fall and, after the investigation, it’s ruled an accident. Little Mshcha’s body is never found but, because of the amount of blood, he’s ruled as dead. John is inconsolable and he drinks himself to an early grave.

—

Kate swears and tries to follow the sound of the giggles and squeals her six year old niece is emitting. She loves her, truly, but when she’s in a demon spawn mood, she’s horrible to babysit. Specially when she tries to emulate Houdini like now. She’s exhausted and still healing the wounds inflicted by an omega up north, but if Victoria finds out she’s lost her munchkin again, there will be hell to pay. Never mind her own mother… She shudders. Peter would be laughing at her now if he knew.

Well, it’s not as if she won’t tell her friend what’s happened later when they have coffee. She’s a masochist like that. She rolls her eyes.

When she finally finds her, she’s crying her eyes out about something she can’t really understand in between all the babbles and the snot. “ _Foxyfoxyfoxy_ ,” she cries, making grabby hands to the bushes. Her tears double when Kate picks her up and marches back to the house.

Peter does laugh at her. If she didn’t like their bitching matches so much… or his legal assistance, for that matter. She remembers the last time he got her out of trouble after she blew that jeep up in Columbia to kill that quimera.

And the gas station.

And the motel room.

She grumbles, mourning the fact that he always enjoys reminding her of that particular trip up north way too much. Or any time he has had to help her ever since he stubbornly wormed his way into her life.

 _But he always does it because it was she who found out about Gerard’s plan a year ago and took the steps to prevent it, no matter how much she didn’t like them mutts_.

She’ll forget about that incident for a long time, until one day, talking to Chris on the phone, he mentions Allison having had a foxy imaginary friend for months now.

Once is chance, twice is coincidence and thrice is a pattern. 

She calls her mother.

—

It doesn’t take them long to connect the dots and identify the fox kit as one Mshcha Kara Stilinski. Kate snorts with derision at what she finds, her respect for the mother nonexistent. Who calls their child Vengeance and Punishment? It paints a dark picture of the kid’s home life before his disappearance. Her respect for the late Talia Hale and Laura Hale is almost zero too, for overlooking the entire situation.

She eyes Alpha Hale with a contempt that makes her bristle. Peter snorts as he comes near. To her it’s clear that it’s too big of a responsibility for Laura to handle. She’s too soft and too afraid to do what needs to be done, always leaving the dirty work to Peter and always judging him for it too, exactly like Talia did. It’s also clear to her that Peter would be a better alpha without even trying. She will never tell him she thinks that, of course, because there’s no need to rub salt in an open wound and because it’s useless to wonder about something that will never happen. 

They form hunter-werewolf pairs and start tracking the kit through the smell he left in one of Allison’s onesies. It’s going to be a long day.

Halfway through the morning (spent with both Peter and Kate uncharacteristically not bickering and very grim), he stops abruptly and changes direction. She follows running after him without complaint or inquiries, trying to keep up. After a little bit even she can hear the wailing panicked barks. She tries to hasten her pace.

What they find in the clearing makes her want to snarl like the werewolf she isn’t. Laura is trying to coerce the kit out of a hollow tree trunk with alpha red eyes. As she watches, the kit sinks his teeth in her arm and she swears, pulling her hand out of the trunk with him attached to it. She shakes her arm and Kate does snarl. Laura takes a step back startled at the sound and the kit latches to the opportunity to hide again.

“Look at what you’ve done, I almost had him!” Laura cries, flashing her red eyes and her elongated teeth, but Kate’s seen way worse than this little bitch playing grown up and she scowls back.

She then proceeds to tear her a new one about how you don’t even do that with a real fox kit, much less with one that’s in reality a neglected, abused and terrified six year old kid. She throws a lot of insults in the middle for good measure and takes pleasure in seeing her reddened in humiliation cheeks and watery eyes when she’s finished. The final nail in the coffin for the alpha is Peter shaking his head in disappointment. 

She ignores the girl as she lowers herself to sit a good ten feet from the trunk’s entrance, but in the line of sight so that the kit can see her every move. Kate’s aware that in the periphery that Peter has made Laura phone the others to call off the search and then tried to kick her out. She’s arguing about Mshcha needing an alpha to ground him and Kate stops paying attention to her because she has noticed the kit’s twitch at the use of his name. It gets her thinking about how aware was the kid about the meaning of his names and of how wrong her mother’s treatment of him was. She recalls that the preschool teacher mentioned that he was adamant about being called Stiles because, according to him, no one could pronounce his name right. Every information and texts Peter has provided her about werefoxes told her that the kits develop exceptionally fast. Could that mean…? 

“Hello, Stiles, my name is Kate,“ she says, soft and kind, which, to be honest, is very difficult for her, because she is neither. “I’m Allison’s aunt.”

It takes eight hours for the kid to come out and eat some hamburger from her fingers, eyeing her and Peter warily. It’s already dark when he lets her touch him as he scents Allison’s onesie. Half an hour later, Stiles’ in her arms, only to panic when Laura appears out of nowhere and bite Kate’s fingers bloody to scurry back inside the trunk.

Peter snarls and removes Laura forcibly from the clearing. Kate calls her every name on the planet as he does and takes some water from the bottle to clean her hand. In all honesty, she could have stopped him from leaving, but she doesn’t make a move to pursue the kid. 

An hour later, they leave, Stiles a wary weight in Kate’s arms.

—

If someone had told Kate Argent that this would be her life four years ago, she would have punched the living daylights out of them while laughing. Dammit, it’s all because she lost to Peter at rock, paper, scissors. Again.

“You need to have a serious conversation with him, Ms. Argent,” the principal is saying and Kate sort of wants to punch her too. 

“So what you’re saying is that that kid took the inhaler from Stiles’ friend when he was having an asthma attack, and because he defended him I should punish him?” 

“Violence is never…” 

“Again, taking a sick kid’s inhaler is not violent?” she cuts in, eyebrow raised. 

“W-well…” she stutters.

“And why is Stiles the only one here, mmm? Where is that other kid, Whittemore? He almost killed a student, after all,” she charges on. “Have you contacted Melissa McCall to inform her too?” 

When she exits the office, leaving a very flustered principal behind, Stiles is sitting on the bench outside. She lowers herself to look at him in the eye. Kate loves that he doesn’t flinch like he used to when Peter and she brought him to live with them. She musses his hair and he gives her one of his foxy grins. She gives him a lecture about how, if he’s going to do something like what he’s done, he should never get caught. Then he congratulates him for standing up for his friend and because that Whittemore kid’s nose is well and truly broken.

The next time Whittemore attempts to bully them, no one can pin on Stiles what happens next. Jackson is so chastised that he doesn’t try again. Peter laughs his ass off when he learns about it and orders Stiles’ favorite pizza. Kate’s seen sporting a vicious proud smile the whole next day.

—

Stiles wakes up gradually to the DVD’s screensaver looping on the TV. Kate is softly snoring with her feet on Peter’s lap, sideways on the big sofa. Peter himself has his eyes closed, head slightly inclined to the right, clearly fast asleep. Stiles is assaulted by an almost overwhelming wave of affection at the sight.

If anyone asked Stiles, he would tell them that he would gladly suffer every singke thing he’s gone through again and again if the result would be the life he has now, this unconventional family. He wouldn’t change Peter’s brilliance and sarcasm or Kate’s snark and cunning for anything. The way they bicker about everything but then instantly come together when Stiles, or the safety of the other is concerned. The way they come to see him first, day or night, if they haven’t seen each other for more than a day.

The way they love him.

This is the life he’s been given, and, despite the initial bumps in the road, he couldn’t be more grateful for it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Some feedback, please?


End file.
